Rumor: EA Planning Boom Blox 2, Shuts Down Mysterious Blueprint Division

Electronic Arts has shut down its super-secret Blueprint division, going by an unconfirmed Variety report that cites an anonymous ex-employees.

Blueprint was started in mid-2007 by 11-year EA veteran Neil Young, who then left the company in 2008. With its dozen or so employees, the division was reportedly tasked with fighting high development costs by coordinating various small teams.

"Using distributed people and leveraging technology in a significant way would allow us to break the high-priced model of game development where everybody is on-site, hired as a full-time regular employee," the source told Variety.

One of Blueprint's projects was apparently a sequel to EA Los Angeles' and Steven Spielberg's physics-based action-puzzler Boom Blox (Wii). It was also tasked with several other EA efforts, including Spielberg's mysterious LMNO action game.

The report indicates that all Blueprint games will live on at different studios, adding that it was "never officially killed" but "simply doesn't exist" as it has no employees.

Armature, founded by veterans from Metroid Prime developer Retro, was apparently one the developers on board with Blueprint, though its project is not publicly known.